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What We Learned at Enterprise Connect 2018

Just before hitting the show floor to make our debut at Enterprise Connect last month, we promised we’d be starting a clearer conversation about unified communications.

While at Enterprise Connect, we began the conversation by surveying attendees about their experience with UC deployments and maintenance, gaining insight into everything from adoption rates to the barriers keeping companies from adopting full-cloud solutions.

Now that we’ve had a chance to reflect on the results, we want to present and breakdown what we see as some truly interesting data points – many of which validate TetraVX’s consultative, custom approach to UC deployments. Here’s what we found:

Hybrid is the new norm. About 70 percent of respondents told us they are not planning to migrate to a fully cloud-based UC solution in the next two years. Instead, the trend continues to be companies augmenting on-prem technology with cloud-based solutions, with about 32 percent of companies indicating they currently have a hybrid model. This data aligns with Gartner’s insights from the 2017 Annual Enterprise Survey, where 47 percent of respondents across all company sizes anticipate deploying some variation of UCaaS by the end of 2018.

Aging infrastructure presents opportunity for transformation. The survey found a large gap in the lifespans of UC infrastructure. Of those surveyed, the two largest subsets were quite opposite – 26 percent indicated they had deployed a new UC solution within the last year yet, while another 26 percent indicated their solution is between six to eight years old. The latter category presents a significant opportunity for fully cloud-based deployments. Because of the rate at which UC has evolved in the last eight years, these companies’ transitions will likely be rip and replace, allowing them to consider an entirely new solution.

A proactive approach can reduce barriers to adoption. We also validated our proactive approach to planning for a successful adoption. Nearly 50 percent of those surveyed either weren’t sure of their adoption rate six months after a deployment or reported that it was below 75 percent. This speaks to a critical piece of UC adoption we see missed far too often: Companies fail to plan and execute a full change communications plan. Additionally, lower adoption rates point to a lack of necessary internal evaluation. As our survey found, 67 percent of respondents said they either did not do a full audit of their current UC environment or were not sure if they did, before choosing a new system.

Aside from conversations about our own solutions, Enterprise Connect again delivered a full picture of the innovations being introduced in the industry. Microsoft and Amazon showed that UC’s future will integrate AI, asking us to imagine a world where customer service calls are routed based on the tone of your voice. We also heard a hunger for user data. Companies want a full picture of their UC environments, even as the enterprise adoption trend continues to be hybrid deployments that can operate in siloed systems. Who is using what collaboration tools and when? How often is a particular department using video conferencing as compared to their peers? Having this type of data readily and easily available was a major need that came out of the conference, and we’re excited these solutions are part of TetraVX’s roadmap going forward.

For TetraVX, Enterprise Connect was just the beginning. We want to keep the conversation going. If you want to stay up to date, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.